


Carriage

by keylimepidge



Series: Voltron Lover's Dictionary: Shiro x Pidge [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Matt ships it, Nerds in space, Pidge may not be?, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Shiro is oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 06:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15189053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keylimepidge/pseuds/keylimepidge
Summary: Shiro finds himself in the same spot over and over again: in the labs with Katie, as if there were only one place to be in the entire universe.





	Carriage

**Author's Note:**

> Part 8 of a collection of Shidge Fics written for my Lover's Dictionary follower celebration on Tumblr!
> 
> Unless otherwise noted, individual entries are not connected to one another.  
> ...  
> 'Carriage' requested by saintartemis
> 
> Pidge and Shiro are both 18+

**Carriage, _noun  
1\. Deportment; manner of carrying the body_**

According to the Laws of Voltron and Probability there is a 97% chance that at any given varga of the quintant a Holt was awake somewhere on the Castle of Lions. Shiro speculates that his statistics professor back at the Garrison would shudder at his less-than-data-driven statement, but at the moment, his anecdotal evidence holds true. 

“That’s because you’re not accounting for the impact of quintessence while factoring in the gravitational constant,” Katie says. Her words come out molasses slow, but she’s quick to shoot Matt a scathing look as she bumps him with her hip from out in front of the keyboard. How they’ve all grown; not all that long ago, Katie would have practically tackled Matt out of the way. 

Matt shoots her the bird and goes, “Yeah, yeah, silly me for assuming you’d already included the adjustments in your algorithm,” he replies, sounding just as patronizing. Maybe not entirely grown up, then.

It’s well past the Altean equivalent of midnight but, as expected, the Holts are just getting started. Better acquainted with Holt antics than with sleep, Shiro has found himself in this exact position more than once: leaning over Katie’s shoulder, idly watching her fingers pluck at the keyboard as she and Matt fake bicker. They may have lost him a few minutes into rattling off the specifications of their most recent project, but Shiro doesn’t need details to recognize the exasperated affection that bounces between the siblings. 

“Get your genius away from me,” Matt huffs in response to some snide comment. He plants his hands on Katie’s arm and shoves.

Collision is inevitable. The thought flickers by that maybe he shouldn't have been so close in the first place, but then he's steadying her by the shoulders and trying to keep his toes from getting smashed. She stumbles, failing to catch her balance, and stops with a soft bump against his chest. He looks down and gives her shoulders a gentle squeeze.

Katie looks up at him with a crooked grin. “Let it be on the record that that was Matt’s fault.” Her voice is warm, and she doesn’t pull away or try to right herself. 

“Could have been avoided if Shiro hadn’t been hovering,” Matt says with a teasing lilt. 

“Could have been avoided if you weren’t such a baby,” Katie says at the exact same time Shiro cuts in with a, “I wasn’t hovering, I just-”

“You gotta get some thicker skin, brother mine,” Katie continues. “Space isn’t the place for babies.”

Matt shoots Shiro a look and raises an eyebrow. Shiro is still holding Katie by the shoulders. She’s reclined into him the slightest bit, her back now flush with his chest. He’s starting to think he understands the look Matt’s giving him, and he’s not sure what’s going to get him into worse trouble: protesting, or continuing to stand there mutely while trying to ignore the pink rising on his cheeks.

“I’m not a baby,” Matt says after a long tick. He doesn’t break eye contact with Shiro. “And Shiro was hovering.”

Shiro feels Katie’s shoulders tense. His hands move away, but she doesn’t. Instead, she glances up at him and grins. 

“Your continued whining only backs up my initial claim, and Shiro can hover all he wants.”

…

At first, it was the nightmares: hot breath down the back of his neck, cold sweats in the dark. They drove him out of his clammy, cramped room, seeking something, anything, to chase away the lingering shadows. He starts in the training deck, but all too soon the crack of disabled training droids becomes the crunch of bones and flesh beneath his galra fist. So he moves to the kitchens, then the bridge, and finally down to the labs. There he finds something unexpected: a bright hubbub, a bustle, a warmth. He finds Katie muttering to herself as she coerces the Castleship’s computer systems to do her bidding. She doesn’t seem to mind his intrusion, simply opening up her stream of chatter to include him as well.

It starts out with the nightmares, but soon his feet carry him to the labs well before sleep ever threatens. When he does eventually crash, passing out on the couch Hunk had brought down ages ago, he sleeps a deep and dreamless sleep and wakes more often than not to Katie slumped against the couch, head lolling back onto the cushion. 

Reuniting with Matt doesn’t change the routine, only adds to it. As much of a night owl as his sister, he sets a station up for himself in the lab and camps out there as often as Katie. How they manage to get anything done between their constant back-and-forth, Shiro isn’t sure, but they’re nonetheless three times as productive together as they are on their own.

“Aaaand we’re done!” Katie exclaims, punctuating her words with a final stroke on the keyboard. Something in Altean races across the holoscreen and then lights up green. Matt sweeps Katie up in a hug, which quickly devolves into some kind of wrestling match that involves a lot of elbows to the gut. Watching from the safety of the couch, Shiro can only shake his head.   
After a few ticks, Katie frees herself from the tussle with her brother by wriggling out of Matt’s chokehold and bounding over to the couch. She lifts Shiro’s arm and ducks underneath it, then holds it out in front of her to create a barrier between her and Matt.

“That’s cheating, you can’t use Shiro as a safe zone!”

“I can and I will,” she says, nestling further behind him. 

“Does Shiro get a say in any of this?” Shiro asks, voice dry. He starts moving his arm away from her. For a moment he’s not sure if he’s imagining it or not, imagining that Katie pulls his arm closer a tick before she lets him go, but it doesn’t matter because real or no the result is the same: he leans in until he feels his side press against hers. 

“You know, I sure could use a victory milkshake,” Matt says. There’s something dangerously sly in the tone of his voice; both Katie and Shiro straighten in sync.

“Go get one, then,” Katie says.

“Nah, I think it’s your turn. I got them last time, and besides, it was my adjustment to the sensing algorithm that helped the last patch go through,” Matt says, nodding to the still-blinking green screen. 

Sighing, Katie looks from Matt, who smirks, to Shiro, who shrugs. She pushes herself off of the couch with a begrudging, “Fine. Maybe Hunk will still be up.”

His eyes follow her as she stomps towards the lab door. She grumbles the whole way over, but right before she slips out of the door, she turns, meets his gaze, and winks. She’s gone before he can respond.

Matt starts up as soon as the lab door slides shut. “You know, Shiro, back in our Garrison days, I used to be a bit of a body language guru.”

Shiro rolls his eyes and turns back to his friend. “Really now?”

Laughing, Matt plops down on the couch next to Shiro. He slings his arms around the couch’s back.

“Yes, I know it’s hard to believe,” Matt says with a sigh, “but I’m more than just a genius when it comes to computers. It started in the Garrison avoiding all of Iverson’s temper tantrum days, and I’ve had plenty of time since then to hone my skills on all sorts of intergalactic beings. I can read most bipeds like a book.”

Shiro wants to rebuke Matt’s wild claims, but now that he thinks about it, Matt _had/i > been exceptionally good at being very far away whenever Iverson lost it on the other cadets._

_Not feeling like stoking Matt’s impressive (and, arguably deserved) ego, Shiro settles for a neutral, “And this is relevant how?”_

_Matt may or may not be a master reader of body language, but Shiro’s got a decent amount of experience with reading Holt mischief, and the sudden narrowing of Matt’s eyes sets off all kinds of warnings. It’s the kind of look that reads ‘set phasers to kill.’_

_“Oh, it’s not really relevant to anything, I was just considering you and Katie.”_

_The couch suddenly feels all-too-small and the lab exceptionally warm. Shiro decides the blinking holoscreen is much more interesting than his grinning friend._

_“How’s that?” Shiro says, still sticking to bland._

_Matt leans back and props his head up in his hands. “It’s probably nothing, really. But, you know, back in the day when you’d come home with me for breaks, I swear Katie followed you everywhere she could. It was sorta like a moon trailing a planet in orbit.” Matt laughs, and even though Shiro knows Matt’s got to be in the middle of a set up, the sound seems genuine. “I used to get so annoyed, like, come on Pidge, let me hang out with my cool pilot friend in peace.”_

_To respond is to betray himself, so Shiro stays silent, lets Matt continue._

_“But nowadays… it’s all different. I guess getting space kidnapped will do that to a guy. Back when we were younger, Katie used to walk around like you were the center of the world,” Matt says. “But now I show up and here you are, carrying yourself like she’s the center of the entire universe.”_

_Shiro tries very hard not to tense. In fact, he tries very hard not to react in any way other than casual. “You’re terrible at reading body language, Matt,” he says with a forced laugh._

_There’s a hiss as the lab door opens behind them. Before he can stop himself, Shiro hops up from the couch and hurries over to help Katie with her armful of milkshakes. Matt laughs. Katie glances at Shiro, expression falling somewhere between confusion and amusement._

_“Am I?” Matt asks, still laughing. “I don’t think I am.”_


End file.
